Amazon Fire HD 8 Readers Edition Ships December 9th

Amazon has just announced a new tablet, the Fire HD 8 Readers edition. This new device will give you a solid e-reading experience, thanks to Blue Shade technology. It is available for pre-order right now and will be shipping out December 9th 2015 for 249.99.

Amazon is calling this new tablet the Readers Edition because it gives you a free one year subscription to Kindle Unlimited. There are over 1 million titles available and unlimited access to thousands of audiobooks. You can read a number of top books, including The Man in the High Castle, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Wayward Pines trilogy, the entire Harry Potter series, and many more. The service regularly costs $9.99 per month, and provides tremendous value, saving you about $120 for the first year.

Fire HD 8 Reader’s Edition comes with a limited edition, rustic brown leather case that gives the look and feel of a real book cover and protects the tablet from accidental scratches. The protective case opens like a book and folds flat for comfortable one-handed reading or can stand Fire HD in landscape or portrait orientation so that you can enjoy your content hands-free.

The Fire HD 8 Readers Edition will make sense for people who want to participate in Amazons expansive ecosystem and get a lot of value for their money. The free one year subscription to the Kindle Unlimited program will likely be the deal clincher for most people, although the free Audible subscription for 30 days is strangely compelling too. This device may not ship millions of units like the 7 inch $50 Fire did, but it should be appealing to customers in a number of countries.

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

I wish they’d just put a keyboard and an option to completely disable the touchscreen on their basic eInk model. I guess I’m stuck on my 10 year old Kindle Keyboard until it falls apart and then I’m done with Amazon. What a shame they’re so stupid.